Newburyport, Mass. (Saving Seafood) โ July 22, 2014 โ Tom Nies is the Executive Director of the New England Fishery Management Council. His opinion piece appeared yesterday in the Providence Journal:
Editor's Note: Saving Seafood has previously covered problems and concerns surrounding Oceana's report, "Wasted Catch: Unsolved Problems in U.S. Fisheries." You can read our comprehensive analysis of their report here.
The New England Fishery Management Council takes a different position from the one expressed in the July 1 editorial ("Frightening waste of fish"), as well as those reported in recent publications about wasteful fisheries bycatch and the related costs to fishermen and society.
The authors of those reports, staff from the international environmental advocacy organization Oceana, addressed important topics that all fisheries managers face. But there are numerous errors and inaccuracies in the Oceana report โ so many that the eight regional fishery management councils, established by federal statute in 1976, collectively put together remarks that discuss the shortcomings of Oceana's publication. The letter is posted on the New England Council's website at FMCs letter to Oceana.
It may be helpful for readers to know that the U.S. fishery councils are charged by law to "prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, facilitate long-term protection of essential fish habitats and to realize the full potential of the nation's fishery resources." The councils are also charged with minimizing bycatch.
While no one disputes that problems remain in our fisheries, Oceana grossly misleads the public by lumping U.S. problems in the same report with global bycatch issues. Additionally, the fishery councils, after comparing the bycatch report's statements with core reference documents developed with the support of the federal fishery science centers, raised their serious concerns directly to Oceana about substantial errors, omissions and organizational approaches that are problematic throughout the publication.
Some of the errors were repeated in the editorial when it made reference to a few fisheries that operate in Rhode Island waters as "some of the biggest wasters among fisheries identified in the report." The paper did not expand on its remarks, but Oceana called out the gear type, the northeast bottom trawl fishery. Identified problems, it said, included killing and injuring "too many" sea turtles. It further claimed that, for the same vessels, shrinking quotas encourage the discarding of fish at sea.
Other facts do not support these statements. According to federal documents prepared in 2013, there was a single interaction with a sea turtle in bottom trawl gear in the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank region. It is well-known that although a small number of turtles venture north to New England during the summer, most prefer the warmer waters of the Mid-Atlantic.
It was equally unclear to fishery managers how reduced quotas, generally associated with less fishing opportunities, could increase bycatch. The rationale was neither explained nor was any reference made to a recent action taken by the New England Council to reduce the minimum sizes of a number of groundfish species, taken primarily in order to avoid "regulatory discards" or tossing sub-legal size fish overboard.
These examples illustrate only a few of the misstatements and factual errors the councils identified in the bycatch report. Their suggestion to Oceana was to follow a practice long ago adopted by federal fishery managers who are held to stricter scientific standards โ to adopt a standardized peer review process to ensure that reports like the one discussed here accurately and objectively represent the best available science.
Oceana chose not to reply to this suggestion.
Read the full opinion piece at the Providence Journal